I personally found that EoW made me stop and think often.

If it's any consolation to you, Aonuma's in his 60s so it's probably not long now until he retires and hands over guidance of the series to someone else.

I agree with some points you make, but I'd be interested in your idea for a new 2D Zelda game. You'd have to come up with a new gameplay concept though, because that's what every 2D Zelda has. So no A Link to the Past, but prettier, or in that vain. I'm impressed with EoW feeling new again.

That's not true. Most of the time it's nothing more than a new feature for the gameplay concept that already works.

LoZ: First
AoL: Experience point system, side scrolling battle system
aLttP: Different battle (swing sword), dual world
LA: Combo of side and top view
OoS: Change seasons for puzzles, link games
OoA: Time travel for puzzles, link games
4S: 2-4 player
4SA: 1-4 player with big TV support
MC: Small/big
PH: Touch controls, seafaring
ST: Dual character control (Link& Zelda)
ALbtW: Wall merging
EoW: Echoes

Every game has its experience defined by it's new gameplay features. It's what gives the games their personality. I'm surprised with EoW they could come up again with something new honestly. I thought we did not get any new '2D' Zelda, becomes they ran out of new ideas. Happy I was wrong.

Indeed, new features. Not gameplay concepts, aside from The Adventure of Link and Four Swords.

I don't agree with the premise that every new game needs to have a new idea. If enough time has passed, it can be just as (if not more) pleasant to have a straight-forward refinement of what was good taking place in a new world.

Well that's how Nintendo looks at it. No new idea, no new game.

Gameplay is what the player is doing, how can my examples not be new gameplay. Ask somebody to explain the difference between one Zelda vs. the other and the answer will be the above mentioned gameplay elements.

Example. Ask somebody the defining thing about A Link to the Past and the answer is the dual world.

But to not to get semantics about features vs. gameplay. What new feature would you put in a new 2D Zelda game to have it stand out?

I am not so sure that Nintendo really thinks that, rather it's what they say for PR purposes. Doesn't mean there's anything malicious about Nintendo's PR, but most of the time there will be new games in any given series because there is demand for them.

A gameplay concept is something much more complex than a gameplay feature. That's why it is generally the case that if you like one game of a series, you'll like other games of the series as well, because they play very much alike even if they do have clear defining differences upon closer inspection.

As for your question, I wouldn't mind a simple EXP system with a few skill trees; you'd earn skill points with each level up. For the sword tree, you'd upgrade strength, speed, spin attack (range and charge speed) and beam, possibly other special moves. A defense tree would provide elemental resistances, reduced knockbacks from enemy hits and the like. A support tree would allow you to mix potions with fewer ingredients, increase potion efficiency and move faster. These are just some quick ideas. And because some of these things could break the game early on, I'd tie some of these skills to items that need to be collected first or challenges that must be completed first.

I already had problems in BotW with climbing - it uses stamina, which can be replenished mid-climb by going into inventory (which pauses game) and using stamina food/elixir, which are made with resources that are pretty much constantly respawning in the world, so practically no cost there - which for me was first step in trivializing exploration. This was actually easily fixable, but they didn't do it, so whether you climb something or not was maybe a decision in first few hours of the game, later becoming moot point due to overabundance of resources.

As I said, Echoes of Tiresome is not a terrible game - but it is disheartening seeing Aonuma striking again with his "puzzle-time" take on everything and instead of making 2D Zelda better, pretty much trivializing most elements of what made it good.

Which actually is not that surprising, he never liked original Zelda, thinking it's too hard. What I'm worried about is that, in mindset in which he obviously is now, if he is tasked with overlooking OoT remake (which is speculated to be next Zelda), he will fuck that up too with his "fresh" ideas.

The game I would call the most comparable to Echoes of Wisdom is Paper Mario: The Origami King. All the ingredients for a great game are there, but one boneheaded decision regarding the core gameplay drags everything down. For TOK it was the removal of RPG staples like EXP and combat abilities during the turn-based battles which were all already proven to work splendidly in the first two Paper Mario games. For EoW it's the removal of the sword (or any conventional weapon, because Zelda could have been given something other than a sword).

Due to the lack of a weapon, EoW feels all too often like you have to take an extra step to get something done. Instead of hitting an enemy directly, you have to summon something. At its core it's also absolutely idiotic to advertise a game as offering so many choices when the most basic and obvious choice is being taken away from the player. There's no "you can play this game like you want" like in Breath of the Wild, here it's a "you have to play it like we want you to." This culminates in the final phase of the story where

It's so infuriating.

What's left is a decent to good game which is not the level of quality you'd like to see and expect from a Zelda game. This is the kind of Zelda that Aonuma would love to make until the end of time. It becomes glaringly obvious when

Top-down Zelda games are faster to make than 3D Zelda games, but we are getting them at a slower rate anyway. Makes it sting all the more that this is this decade's new top-down Zelda. A Link Between Worlds had its shortcomings, but it did a lot more things right than Echoes of Wisdom.

Lastly, can Nintendo please move on from using A Link to the Past's overworld? They seriously embedded it in Echoes of Wisdom's center with a bunch of alterations, but it's still easy enough to recognize.